philippine studies

Ateneo de Manila University • Loyola Heights, Quezon City • 1108 Philippines

Rizal’s Morga and Views of Philippine History

Ambeth R. Ocampo

Philippine Studies vol. 46, no. 2 (1998): 184–214

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 Rizal's Morga and Views of Philippine History
Amberh R. Ocampo

Antonio de Morga, lieutenant governor of the Philippines in the late

sixteenth century, described the food of the indios as follows:
Their daily fare is composed of: lice crushed in wooden pillars and when
cooked is called morisqueta (this is the staple throughout the land);
cooked fish which they have in a b u n m pork, venieon, mountain
buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef and fish which they know is
best when it has started to mt and stink (Retana 1909,174).

Reading this text in the British Museum 280 years later, Rizd was
so incensed that he later responded in print with:

This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who, l i i any other

nation, treat food to which they are not accustomed or is unknown to
them with disgust. The English, for a m p l e , feel horror to see a Span-
iard eating snails. To the Speninrd roast beef is repugnant and he can-
not understad how Steak Tartar or raw beef can be eaten; the Chiiese
who have taltlcn' and eat shark cannot stand Roquefort cheese etc. etc.
This fish that Morga mentions, that cannot be good until it begins to
mt, is bagoong [salted and fermented fish or shrimp paste used as a
sauce in Ffipino cuisine] and those who have eaten it and tasted it
know that it neither is nor should be rotten (Rizal 1890, 264):

Rizal's sarcastic rebuttal appears, surprisingly, not in his satirical

novels or his polemical tracts, but in a scholarly work--his annotated
reedition of Morga's Sucesas de has Ishas Filipinas. Aside from the ra-
cial slurs to which he was reacting, however, R W maintained mixed

Ws article was a paper presented at the Intenrational Conferemae on Jose Rizal

and hAsian Raahance, Kuala L u m p , Malaysia, 3 Oaober 1995.
 RIZAL'S MORGA

feelings for the Morga, depending on its usefulness for his thesis that
Spanish colonization retarded, rather than brought civilization to, the
Philippines and its inhabitants.
Unfortunately Rizal's Morga has been relegated in the canon, un-
der his "minor writings" (Craig 1927), and remains largely unread
due to the pre-eminence of his novels, Noli me ta'ngere and El
Filibusterismo. Unlike the novels, which have been attacked and con-
demned regularly in the past century, the Morga remains largely
ignored. It is lamentable that, despite k i n g a classic of nationalist
historical writing, Rizal's Morga is seldom read today.
That Rizal's annotations are largely disregarded today stems basi-
cally from the recent advances in historical, archeological and ethno-
graphic research. Although many of Rizal's assertions have been
validated by recent research, the fact is that his work is now dated.
Moreover Rizal's annotations are secondary, and today's scholars
concentrate more on the primary source, Morga, than on Rizal's notes.
Few Filipinos today, even the most patriotic, would find the time
and energy to read the sxnall text of Rizal's footnotes, even if penned
by the national hero.
Another factor in the relative obscurity of Rizal's annotations to
Morga was censorship during the Spanish colonial period. Like Noli
me ta'ngere and El Filibusterismo, the Rizal edition of Morga was
banned in the Philippines in the late nineteenth century. Therefore
copies confiscated by Spanish customs in Manila and other ports of
entry were destroyed. Due to the burning of one particularly large
shipment of the Morga, the book attained "rare" and "out of print?
status within a year of its publication. It did not have a second print-
ing, and the few copies in circulation were left hidden and unread
by frightened owners.
There is also the problem of language, which restricted the im-
pact of the Morga to a small, educated, Spanish-reading elite in
Manila. Among this already minute circle, one could count with the
fingers of one hand, the people who would read a historical work
like Morga rather than the more entertaining Rizal novels. Rizal's
Morga was not read by the masses, although people heard a great
deal about this controversial work. Rizal's Morga, thus unread, is
almost forgotten.
This article deals with Rizal's views on Philippine history. It at-
tempts to place Rizal's Morga within the framework of his work, as
well as in the larger context of Philippine historiography. Rizal's
Morga may not have been read widely, but its significance lies in
PHILIPPINE STUDIES

the fact that with this edition, Rizal began the task of writing the
first Philippine history from the viewpoint of a Filipino.

Philippine History

One matter has to be clarified at the outset. Rizal is often cred-

ited with "rewriting Philippine history!' The notion of "Philippine
history" is ambiguous to begin with. It can mean either the history
of the place or the history of the people of the place. The difference
between these two histories is related to the different concepts of the
Filipino and the Filipino Nation. The former did not exist until Rizal's
time, and the latter did not exist until the establishment of the short-
lived Philippine Republic under Aguinaldo in 1898. If Philippine his-
tory is taken to mean the history of the place, then Rizal was indeed
rewriting history, because there are numerous Spanish chronicles
written-from the late sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. However,
if we mean the history of the Filipinos, then, being the first history
and having nothing to rewrite, Rizal was actually writing Philippine
history. The historiographical importance of this little-read scholarly
work by Rizal is that it was the first historical work on the Philip
pines by a Filipino. It is the first history written from the point of
view of the colonized not the colonizer.
Rizal seems to have been reflecting on Ms country's history shortly
after completing Noli me Mngere, in late February 1887, and obviously
drawing on the popular Tagalog proverb, "ang hindi marunong
lumingon sa pinunggulingan hindi maknrarating sa pinaromnan " (he'who
does not know where he came from, will never reach his destina-
tion). He realized the importance of the past as a tool to understand
the present and eventually confront the future. Although he wished
to embark on some historical -h, he restrained himself, admitting
his inadequacy in a letter to the Austrian ethnographer, Ferdinand
Blumentritt, asking him to write a history of the Philippines:

The Philippines would be grateful to you if you will write a complete

history of our country, judged from impartial criteria. I believe that
you are the only one who can do it. I have the courage for this, but I
do not know enough. I have not read as many books about my coun-
try and the Spanish libraries are closed to me; furthermore my time is
needed for other things and everything I say will always be suspected
of having been inspired by a partisan spirit, but you would be read
 RIZAL'S MORGA

as an impartial judge; you have no selfish interests...y ou do not have

to amend historical truth neither for the sake of Filipinos nor the Span-
iards, and you could contemplate the past in cold blood like an out-
.
side observer. . . 1 think that you are the man best equipped for this
task (Episfolario 1938, 5:116).'

By this time, Rizal had begun another novel, a sequel to Noli me

tingere. But towards the end of June 1888, he tore up the completed
chapters, changed the plot entirely, and began anew to produce a
work which would influence his countrymen "to think correctly"
(Epistolario 1931, 2:20-21). Then, in the middle of August 1888, re-
signed that Blumentritt could not be persuaded to write a history of
the Philippines, Rizal set his literary labors aside, and began to work
on his country's history.
Armed with a letter of introduction from the Director of the In-
dia Office Library, Reinhold Rost, he applied for and was granted a
reader's pass to the British Museum, where he began to consult early
printed materials on the Philippines. "I'm busy," he wrote to his
friend, Blumentritt, "I'm assiduously reading all the ancient
[i.e.primaryl sources on the history of the Philippines, and I do not
think I want to leave London until I have read all the books and
manuscripts that have references to the Philippines. I want to become
the 'Filipino Blumentritt"' (Epistolario 1938, 5:311).
Close to 18 August 1888, Rizal was copying out, by hand, the
entire first edition of Morga's Sucpsos de las islas Filipinas, annotating
it along the way, confident that Antonio Regidor, a wealthy coun-
tryman, in exile in London following the Cavite Mutiny of 1872,
would publish the work when completed. As an added incentive,
Regidor promised Rizal that as soon as he had recovered his invest-
ment in the book, all profits would be divided equally between au-
thor and publisher. Rizal, however, was a realist who accepted that
a o l a r l y books such as the Morga would not be financially reward-
ing. Thus he stated in a letter to Blumentritt that his aim was sim-
ply to "present a new edition to the public, above all the Filipino
public . . . I do this solely for my.country, because this work will
bring me neither honor nor money" (Epistolario 1938L3
His fears proved correct, for he did not earn anything from the
Morga. In fact, Regidor unexpectedly backed out of the venture with-
out the courtesy of an explanation. One of Rizal's friends hinted at
racism, as Regidor was of Spanish extraction. After all his work in the
copying, editing, and annotation of the Sucesos Rizal had a finished